Bone-setting, so-called, and The treatment of sprains / by R. Dacre Fox.

  • Fox, R. Dacre.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bone-setting, so-called, and The treatment of sprains / by R. Dacre Fox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    5/20
    (SO-CALLED).* Mr. President and Gentlemen,— This is the first time in the history of the British Medical Asso- ciation that so-called Bone-setting has been seriously discussed, and I think it is matter for congratulation that we have at last set- ourselves impartially to- examine the practice, notwithstanding that it is almost exclusively employed by a class of persons who are without our pale. The literature of bone-setting is scanty. Dr. Wharton Hood's handbook, giving an account of the late Mr. Hutton's method of setting free stiff limbs, is, so far as I know, the only attempt at a systematic exposition. There are, in addition,, some papers, scattered through the various journals, by Mr. Adams,- Mr. Howard Marsh, and others, stating their opinion as to what cases are most likely to be benefited by the forcible bending of joints, and giving instances of ill results that have followed such treatment in unsuitable cases. For nearly three years I was assis- tant to the late Mr. James Taylor, M.RC.S.,- of Whitwoith, in Lancashire, the last direct descendant of a family that had practised bone-setting in that village for more than two hundred years, and I think I may perhaps be able to throw same light on the subject of this discussion. Much misconception exists as to the practice of bone-setters-; many of the methods of treatment popularly attributed to them have no other existence than in the imagination of ignorant patients, whose stories we, as a profession, are perhaps rather too ready to believe. It is certain that some families—notably th« Taylors, Huttons, and Masons—have by their manipulative and mechanical skill justly acquired a great reputation. In what has their practice cousisted'? First, in the treatment of fractures, recent dislocations, and sprains; secondly, in the cure of stiff Abridged from a paper read ai a discussion beforo tlio Surgical Section of the awiulvl- Qeotinu of tlie Bntish Medical Association at Worcester 1882.